Artist’s Statement

The beginning of each piece is a leap of faith; jumping in to make the first mark, with an idea or without an idea, it may feel random. After that, the listening and responding begins. A meditation cushion in my studio faces the piece I'm working on. When I'm not sure what comes next, I have a seat to look and wait. It's a conversation. My job is to tune in to such a degree that trust blooms -- at that level, there are no random marks!

The layering of text, direct drawing, transparent prints and painting is one of the ways I weave together visual decisions and meaningful content. I create silkscreen and solar plate prints from drawings or photographs I've made in the field. I print them onto rice paper, and collage them into the surface of the painting, with previous layers showing through. Layering allows for ambiguous or dreamlike aspects of reality, and an element of time, to slip in. Recently, I've been glueing selected ripped-up pages of books on meditation as foundations for my paintings; the text works on two levels, visually and content-wise. Even though the text often becomes obscured by drawing and painting, it’s an important layer in the build-up of the character of these pieces.